End of Glory Girl
The End of Glory Girl chronicles the mutilation, mutation and violation of Glory Girl by Panacea. Prelude Several weeks after the Battle against Leviathan, Amy found a letter that proved that her birth father was an evil villain. The home invasion conducted by Bonesaw shattered Amy's self confidence when Mark's life was endangered and she was forced to heal his brain and defend herself. Emotionally drained, Panacea changed Glory Girl's cognition in a moment of weakness.Interlude 11h Due to this, Glory Girl would later be critically injured by Crawler and Amy would decide to attempt to heal her, despite Victoria pleading her not to. Panacea and the rest of the city's parahumans got caught up in the Slaughterhouse Nine's terrorist campaign. Bonesaw released her Agnosia Plague incapacitating everyone's teamwork abilities, Panacea was immune to this due to her powers. Jack and Bonesaw confronted Panacea at Arcadia High, where Jack tried to convince her to cut loose.“Isn’t it unfair? Through no fault of your own, the blood in your veins is the blood of a criminal, and that’s affected how your family looks at you. You’ve been saddled with feelings that aren’t your fault, and doomed to a life without color, enjoyment or pleasure. Don’t you deserve to follow your passions? A decade and a half of doing what others want you to do, doing what society wants you to do, haven’t you earned the right to do what you really desire, just this once?” “That’s not really that convincing,” Panacea spoke, but she didn’t sound assertive. “I know. So I’ll offer you a deal. If you indulge yourself, we’ll surrender.” “What?” “I won’t even make you do it now. Just look me in the eye, and honestly tell me you’ll do it. Drop all of the rules you’ve set yourself. I don’t care what you do after, you can wipe your sister’s memories, you can kill yourself, you can run away or come with us. And your side wins.” - Excerpt from Prey 14.10 When Skitter attacked and was in danger of being killed by the more experienced Jack, Panacea intervened by, presumably, agreeing or threatening Jack, and Jack left.My forearms and hands didn’t cover enough of my head. I could feel the cuts nicking my ears, slashing through my hair by my temple. A few slashes made their way through gaps between my arms and fingers. Blindly, I rushed for the classroom. Needed a second to breathe, to think, before I was whittled down to a bleeding ruin. I could hear footsteps behind me. I felt a hand seize my shoulder. I whirled and knocked it away, felt another knife slash crossing the back of my head. I had blood in my eyes, my ears were a bloody ruin, and cuts burned like fire around my scalp and neck. A shout. Not Jack’s. I heard it again, the same words, but I couldn’t make them out. There was blood in my ears. I stumbled into the classroom, and Panacea was at my side in a moment. - Excerpt from Prey 14.10 After healing Skitter, Panacea answered her questions claiming that she was going to heal Glory Girl. Though suspicious, Skitter left in her pursuit of Jack.“She’s going to return to normal, though?” “Just a little more time. I have to ensure she’s totally together inside the cocoon, then disconnect her from it, and make sure she reaches a physical equilibrium afterward. Once I know she’ll recover…” she trailed off. “Amy-” “Go. You’re done. Go after Jack.” I hesitated. There was a look in her eyes, dark. She wasn’t meeting my gaze. I turned and ran. Atlas was waiting on the rooftop as I ascended the stairs. - Excerpt from Prey 14.10 Jack likely left Skitter alone because he thought Panacea agreed to his suggestion,We concede our loss to you, Brockton Bay. As per my agreement with Miss Amelia, we’ll be leaving your fascinating city. It was fun. - Excerpt from Prey 14.11 he has assistance when it comes to reading parahumans.A combination of what Jaki said (Imp gets nudged away by her shard, she gets a bad feeling as she prepares to attack, and if and when she does attack her attack is off-target, or she hesitates, creating a window), intuition on Jack's part (suspicion, a hyperawareness of odd details, the movement of air in the room, 'it's too quiet', etc., happening to move to another location just as Imp strikes out), and leverage of the broadcast... Crawler wakes to initial commotion, he uses his full senses with his shard happening to kick into full gear (a la Skitter and her varying range) and/or moves across room, forcing Imp to back up from Jack, Shatterbird lashes out in a blind attack that happens to connect. On that last point, the Nine can be considered to be an to add 'unconscious' extension of Jack for all intents and purposes. To Imp, it's just a 'This feels like a bad idea, I'm going to do it anyway! Fuck, missed! Oh shit, ow! Well now I'm bleeding and, it's pretty damn serious. That must be why it felt like such a bad idea!' ... Take note of Jack's discussion of keystones in his first appearance. He's getting help in identifying points to manipulate, and then those points are getting nudged further in the broadcast. Communication is a two-way street. - Comments by Wildbow, archived on Spacebattles He also promptly forgot about it,PaperPrayers: At the end of this arc, Jack left a note saying they left Brockton Bay per "agreement with Miss Amelia". On first read through I was confused about this, 'cause it was Tattletale who came up with the idea that the Nine should leave if more than one candidate survives testing, and since all the candidates survived the testing, it made sense. But why credit Amy? But after another read through of Worm, I remembered. Jack told Amy that if she broke her rules, the Nine would leave the city. Skitter forced Amy to break her rule to cure the agnosia plague. It took fifteen minutes for Skitter and Tattletale to reach the boat graveyard, so there would be enough time for the Nine to notice the effects of Amy's cure. Add in the fact that nothing suggested the Nine were done with recruiting after the plague was released, so there was a possibility that they were staying a bit longer... My question is: do you think Skitter forced the Nine to leave the city prematurely, thus potentially kicking off the end of the world? Wildbow: It was a tongue in cheek thing on Jack's part. - WB on reddit. focusing on the End of the World. Events Amy's description of her intentions in modifying Victoria lead one to think of rape and she did use her power to change Victoria's body, essentially mutilating her sister. Tattletale eventually caved and told Lady Photon where her nieces were in exchange for New Wave being hands off with the Undersiders and the Travelers.Tattletale frowned. “I’m trying to think about what’s easiest to achieve while clearing up the most problems. I already got in touch with New Wave and got them to chill out for a bit.” “How’d you pull that?” Regent asked. “Lady Photon was wondering where her nieces went. I told her that Panacea was healing Glory Girl but she still wanted her space. ... It isn’t true, or I should say it isn’t the whole truth, but we tried to reach Panacea and she turned us down again and again. It’s a shame, but what can you do?” - Excerpt from Colony 15.2 In this loop Amy was found by her aunt, adoptive mother, and Miss Militia. She found herself in a dangerous mental state from this.WB on Reddit She was in no fit state to repair the damage and restore Glory Girl. senevri:'''I’m not buying it. I mean, I had issues back with the leviathan situation with the total ignorance of aquatic invertebrates Skitter was displaying, but this? 1. Even if Amy couldn’t fix her sister on her own, there’s no way she wouldn’t be able to create a viable human form. 2. She’s their best shot at fixing, well a LOT of things. Whether she wanted it or not, shipping her into the Birdcage is like dumping a megaton of food and diamonds in the middle of the ocean. Or perhaps dumping a ton of refined uranium in the middle of north korea. Basically, the Idiot Ball and Conflict Ball are way too obvious here. The only reason for this to happen is because the plot demands removing a powerhouse like Panacea from the equation, and that’s not a believable reason. '''wildbow: #1 Capable using her power? Yes. Capable given her mental state? No. #2 More details on this later.- Discussion from Interlude 15.x Regardless this was the 'end' of Glory Girl. Aftermath Panacea flees to the Birdcage where she met her father and figured things out. Victoria was placed in the Asylum where she made friends and figured herself out. Panacea put memory blocks on her sister to keep her sane, it is not known if this was done before or after Victoria's body was restored. Trivia * It is important to note that Wildbow is a horror writer. While it can be presumed that Amy did sexually assault her adopted sister that is yet another crime in addition to her mutilation. * While it is unknown how much of this was storyline was planned the originals ending in the Drafts was considered too dark.Before I settled on Taylor as a protagonist, I wrote a lot of snippets, most characters showed up in one snippet or another. 'Guts and Glory' featured Amy and Victoria's story, told in full, and it basically reached the point you see here, except the PRT didn't send her to the Birdcage, which was the worse outcome. - WB on Sufficient Velocity. Just as a comparison.The first draft extended from the day that The Brockton Bay Brigade found Amy to the day she got her powers. Kind of unique among those early stories because it remained relatively unscathed through multiple drafts & the worldbuilding that followed. Almost to the point that I could point to it and call it all canon. This was where I first introduced the Nine. Jack (Jack Knife), Crawler (‘Skitter’) and Shatterbird (‘Breaker’) and Mannequin were all in the group, more or less as they are here, along with others that included Nice Guy and Murder Rat. Glory Girl got sliced up by Jack, Amy had her trigger event, healed her sister and the tide was turned enough that the Nine retreated for another day. The second draft took place much later. Amy discovers who her dad is, and much as she does in Worm, she begins breaking down, the facade she had up begins to crack. Marquis was introduced here, and the family was fleshed out. The third draft was pretty much an attempt to join the previous drafts together, with material to flesh them out and fill in the gap. Victoria’s relationship with Gallant was built here, but he was different. He had a friend who had the emotion reading ability (who was set up with Amy) while his own abilities were a little more offensive, and he played up the gentleman angle more. I tried my hand at the ending, decided it was too dark, and basically gave up on Guts and Glory at that point. - Comment by Wildbow on Prey 14.8 Site Navigation